LORD John Cryer, a former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, has said that Sir Keir Starmer could face being forced out of office like Boris Johnson.
He also said the Prime Minister has “serious questions to answer” and claimed that Peter Mandelson is “probably” guilty of treason.
Asked if it felt like the final days of Johnson, he told GB News: “I’m not sure – look, it could be, it could be. Just going back to the Mandelson scandal, I think we should start by remembering that the reason that we’re discussing this now is because those victims came forward to accuse Epstein.
“And and many times in this studio, we’ve discussed the grooming gangs in the North and Midlands, abuse and exploitation by men, and now we’re talking about rich and powerful men, one in particular, abusing abusing women
“And Mandelson, well, for a start, Mandelson might be guilty of treason. I know we’ve got to be careful about what we say in legalistic terms, but he was passing secrets to another power, effectively, another power. So he’s probably guilty of that.
“On Keir, I’ve known Keir for a long time now. He’s got some really serious questions to answer. Now, he was told twice, as far as we know, that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein continued.
“The first time was as far back as 2023 when Jim Pickard from the Financial Times said, I think he was in a news conference, he said he stayed in Epstein’s house while Epstein was in jail for underage sex.
“Keir has got to try and explain, and I don’t know how you do it, why he then decided to appoint Mandelson after all that and the previous scandals.
“I will say this in Keir’s defence, and this is why I still have time for Kier, I saw him as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. I saw him close up for about ten years as Leader of the Opposition, and before that, as Shadow Brexit Secretary.
“As Leader of the Opposition, he did tackle the one thing that really needed tackling in the Labour Party, and it’s something that still fills me with shame, and that is the scourge of anti-semitism, which ripped through our ranks.
“It was present in councils. It was present up and down the country, and he showed some bottle in taking it on.
“Prior to that, this sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but when you’re a cabinet minister or a shadow cabinet minister, the one thing that you hate doing, and it’s same for the Conservatives, is speaking to your own MPs and your own peers, because very often, some of them have got it in for you.
“Some of them have done the job. So they know more than you. Some of them want your job. Every time I said to Keir something had happened to do with Brexit over the weekend, I said to him, on a Monday night, you’ve got to come and speak to Labour MPs.
“He never bottled it. He never bottled it. He never ducked it. And he’s one of the very, very few people who’ve done that.”
